


Stellar

by Kemmasandi



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Mechpreg, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Other, graphic descriptions of alien birthing process
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-23 01:44:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18539752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kemmasandi/pseuds/Kemmasandi
Summary: Optimus and Ratchet welcome a new life into the world.





	Stellar

**Author's Note:**

> Another fic that used to be tumblr-exclusive. A long time ago I wrote this intending to tie it into a much larger fic series - the one that became Book of Hours, in fact - but I've since decided that it no longer fits. I put it on tumblr as a treat to fellow mechpreg fans, but wasn't intending to post elsewhere. Then someone reposted it here on Ao3 last year, and a couple of other people have requested that I post it, so... here y'all go. XD
> 
> (I've edited it, but only a little. The vast majority of this is exactly as it was way back in 2013.)

...

Optimus came out of recharge with a jolt. The darkness of Ratchet’s quarters surrounded him, unfamiliar messages blinking at him from his HUD. The medic’s familiar weight draped over his left shoulder, helm pressed into the gap in the plating at the crook of his shoulder. His chronometer flashed 1:16 AM.

He lay still for a few moments while his higher functions gathered themselves, an idle thought queue trying to work out what had woken him. The soft thrum of Ratchet’s engines sent vibrations sweeping through his plating, and ordinarily it would have been comfortable, even pleasurable, but a sudden sharp pain in his abdomen –- different from the steady dull ache which had accompanied him for the last year –- made Optimus draw in a hissed vent, hydraulics tensing on reflex. The messages in his HUD flickered, soft green notifications gradually blinking out of existence. Orange warnings clustered in their place -– no wonder it felt as though something was trying to claw its way through his internals. Optimus read through them, and groaned softly.

> _> > emergence sequence in progress_
> 
> _-support systems disengaging ---COMPLETE_
> 
> _-troubleshoot phase ---COMPLETE [report.fil]_
> 
> _-commencing birth phase [1]_
> 
> _ >> program.exe_
> 
> _[WARNING] plate lock engaged_
> 
> _[WARNING] system integrity below recommended standards_
> 
> _ >> proceed [?]_
> 
> _\---medical override code required_

“Ratchet,” he croaked, pulling his legs up so that his pedes rested flat on the berth, his helm lolling back as a wave of fiery pain originating somewhere low in his pelvic girdle washed through his neural net. :: _Wake up ::_  he sent in a databurst underscored thrice with the glyphs for ‘medical emergency’. :: _I need your help._ ::

Ratchet, never at his best upon waking, groaned, his systems whirring sickly for a moment before his medical processor roared to life. The rest of him came online in a rush. Understanding flooded his field, his optics going wide as he pushed himself off Optimus.

“You’re going into emergence?” he guessed, his optics flickering as his redundant systems finished booting up. “The protocols are active?”

“I’d assume so,” Optimus replied, shuttering his optics as something pulled inside his chassis. The edge of the pain vanished, leaving something more familiar, more like the ache his damaged gestational systems had been pulsing at him since his unborn child had grown large enough to force her protective chamber to extend despite the scars in the biomechanisms. It felt like a cramp –- not particularly painful in comparison to wounds he'd suffered in the past, but enough to grab the great majority of his attention and make him want to curl up into a dexter-sized ball of misery.

“Open up your medical ports,” Ratchet suggested, stroking grey digits across the panel covering Optimus’ lateral interface ports and gifting him a tired smile. “I’ll see how far progressed you are. The first stage is essentially just getting everything into the correct position. For most carriers it’s the most painful stage, but with you, I… don’t know.” Ratchet fell silent, shook his helm, and forged onwards. “It’s an orn early, but frankly sparklings come when they will; it’s futile trying to keep them to a schedule.”

Optimus let his panel slide open, the quick flash of electricity and foreign data as Ratchet connected to him routine by now. Ratchet’s presence, bolstered by medical overrides, drifted uncontested through his programming, sorting through trees and watching as programs carried out their myriad tasks.

“This has hardly been a normal gestation,” he said dryly. His hands had drifted; one rested on the plates of his abdomen, curved over the faint bulge of his gestation chamber, the other on Ratchet’s forearm. Idly he smiled down at the medic -– _his_ medic, now more than ever.

“It has not,” Ratchet agreed, his optics narrowing. Optimus felt him tweak a line of coding, and the tight feeling in his abdomen eased a little.

> _ >> plate lock disengaged_
> 
> _> > program.exe_
> 
> _-commencing parturition phase [1]_

The medic, his mate, sat back and surveyed Optimus, his field flickering with something approaching uncertainty. “You know, at this stage of my life I never expected to be in this position,” he blurted out, his servos sliding to Optimus’ almost on automatic. “The war, and even my age… it just seemed a distant fantasy of what might have been, had things turned out differently.”

Optimus didn’t even have to guess. “You are nervous,” he said, shuttering his optics as his chassis twinged. _That makes two of us._

Ratchet vented a chuckle, smiling crookedly. “I’ve delivered hundreds of sparklings in my time as a medic, and yes, I’m nervous. How are you feeling?”

Optimus braced his servos against the berth and pushed himself up, wincing as the movement made the pain in his abdomen redouble. He sat as straight as he could, leaning back on his palms to ease the pressure on his gestational systems. “It hurts,” he said honestly. “More so than I was expecting.”

Ratchet’s lips thinned. “I can’t say I’m surprised. You’re just entering the first proper birth phase now. At this stage the pain should feel like a dull ache that comes and goes in waves as the components in your abdomen make room for the emergence channel.”

Optimus shook his helm, his optics dimming as he turned his attention inwards. The ache was constant, but the severity of it fluctuated, ebbed and flowed from sharp, knife-edge peaks to gentle rolling lulls in which he could almost forget they were there entirely. He said as much, and Ratchet made a disgruntled cluck, hunting through his systems reports for the cause.

The bond linking his spark to his child wavered, flooded with an odd, faraway curiosity. Sensors fired in his gestation chamber as the sparkling shifted, her movements pulling at the support lines which had sustained her thus far.

_I still need a name for you_ , he thought, pressing his servo against his heated abdominal plates.

His systems were running hot –- standard enough for a carrier in emergence, he knew. Ratchet had worked tirelessly to make sure he knew what was normal and what wasn’t, as much that he would not panic at the process as so he could tell Ratchet with certainty if something went wrong. Electricity crackled through his lines, dry heat building up in his internals. His fans engaged on their lowest setting, quietly dragging cooler air through his internal mechanisms.

“Well, we’d been expecting this at least,” Ratchet said eventually, disconnecting himself and swinging his legs over the side of the berth. “You’re coming along nicely so far, but for the fact that your scars are preventing your gestational systems from sliding into position easily. Get up and have a walk around, at least for a couple of minutes. Gravity might help you out.”

Optimus suppressed a grimace as he accepted his mate’s offered servo, letting Ratchet’s preternatural medic’s strength lift him upright. Their daughter flared interest/surprise at him, tinged with a healthy dose of impatience. She knew something was up, and –- in a way Optimus recognised from vorns of dealing with Ratchet –- she intended to find out what exactly it was.

“Patience, little one,” he murmured, stroking fingers over his central abdominal seam. “This may take a while.”

Ratchet, turning to face him, smiled, his expression melting into a fond mix of worry, empathy, and an honest, clear love that threatened to stop Optimus’ fans dead in their casings. “She wants out, does she?” he asked, a rhetorical question if there ever was one. “They all do, at the end, no matter how they get there, or whose insides they kick in the process.”

“I can believe that,” Optimus gave a wry smile, reaching out and tugging Ratchet towards him.

The medic let himself be coaxed close, servos reaching out, digits ghosting across Optimus’ abdomen, touching him with the gentle hands of a lover. “Come, walk with me,” he suggested, his servos coming to rest on Optimus’ hip fairings. “It has a good chance of helping.”

Optimus let himself be steered, following Ratchet’s careful backward steps to the opposite side of the room. Every step jarred, the gentle shift of his own weight timed against the come-and-go waves of pressure and pain within his abdomen. “It feels as though it has taken a lifetime to get to this stage,” he commented softly, in part an attempt to distract himself from his complaining internals. “A mere lunar cycle just does not seem long enough.”

“To be fair, it has been a very busy cycle,” Ratchet agreed, chuffing a puff of air out his shoulder vents. He turned, as if in a slow dance, and guided Optimus back into the centre of the room. “A stressful one, and at times terrifying… but we’ve survived, and that’s the important thing.”

Optimus looked down at his lopsided grin, and smiled in return. “Yes, all three of us.”

It was as natural as waking to lean in and kiss Ratchet, soft and sweet, lips meeting in a tingling scrape of metal as their hands clasped over his abdomen. Their unborn child fluttered inside him, her spark reacting impatiently to the flare of nervy love from his own.

What was a surprise was the sudden throb of real pain that lanced through his neural net, sharp and cutting. Optimus gasped against Ratchet’s mouth, his engine stuttering.

“What was that?” Ratchet stopped, field and frame calm, serious, once again the presiding medic.

It had come from just underneath his subdural layer, a sensor node cluster crushed between shifting components. Optimus traced the damage report and sent it to Ratchet in a databurst. “More or less normal labour pains, from what I’ve read. I simply wasn’t expecting it at that particular moment.”

Ratchet nodded, his servos cool against Optimus’ heating chassis. “You’re more than likely right, but keep a record of the incidence. It takes a while for those deeper nodes to repair themselves. Keep walking in the meantime, and I’ll carry out another progress check in five minutes or so.”

Despite his gestational systems’ painful protest, Optimus obeyed. He trusted Ratchet’s word a little more, after all.

* * *

* * *

4:45 AM.

Optimus sat, half on the edge of the berth, one leg tucked up on the mesh surface beside him and the other hanging off the edge, leaning back on his arms and grinding his dentae against a wave of shallow, clenching pain digging claws into his subdural protoform.

Ratchet knelt between his legs, medical lines plugged directly into his neural net, hands cupping the distended bulge of his midsection. As his internals shifted and gestational hardware came to the front, the once-negligible curve had become grossly exaggerated, to the point that when he looked down at himself he couldn’t reconcile the image his optics gave him with his knowledge of his own frame. He looked ready to pop, as the humans said. He felt it, too.

But three hours of agonized waiting had come to nothing. His damaged systems did not want to give up their precious cargo.

The problem was twofold -– his internal hardware, scarred and misshapen, could not quite shift into the proper positions. That alone would have been workable, if painful, but in a routine scan Ratchet had found with a snarled oath that the subdural layer of his protoform had all but fused, completely blocking off the emergence channel.

“Ideally I would have found this sort of damage before you went into emergence, so that I could put you into stasis and fix it relatively painlessly,” the medic scowled, sweeping his thumbs in soothing circles over Optimus’ plating. “As you are now, I can’t risk that –- you need to be awake and alert during emergence. I can’t give you painkiller chips, nor can I risk turning off the sections of your neural net that are being damaged by this, because if I did that your autonomics would take over, and they most certainly are not programmed to deal with something like this. I’m sorry, I should have caught it cycles ago.”

Optimus shook his helm, having to reset his vocaliser twice before he managed a thick denial. “What’s done is done, Ratchet. Don’t, please.”

Ratchet made a wordless huff, half frustration and half fear. “This is how it’s going to happen. We’re going to get your armor out of the way first, then your external protoform is going to have to be disassembled and your subdural layers cut apart. Depending on how close to full emergence you are by that stage, I may or may not have to surgically assist the sparkling as she descends. At the moment she’s up here—” he rubbed the top of Optimus’ bump— “and the emergence channel comes out down here—” his hand swept down to the lower half of Optimus’ abdomen, just above his pelvic girdle. “For the moment, don’t worry about that. Let’s just see how it goes.”

Distantly Optimus heard him say, “I’m going to try manually shifting the outer plates. It’s going to hurt; there’s nothing I can do to avoid it.”

“I have been in pain for so long at this stage that I had thought I had become used to it,” Optimus replied in a harsh gasp. He curled forwards, helm resting on Ratchet’s shoulder, his hands coming up to rest over his midsection on the backs of Ratchet’s own servos. “I was wrong! Do what you must, Ratchet. I trust you.”

There was an audible pause, the clicking of a vocaliser resetting before Ratchet spoke. “Sit up again, it’ll help the plates ease open.”

As Optimus obeyed, Ratchet braced his thumbs against the two plates on either side of the central locking piece and _pushed,_ up and apart. Optimus moaned through gritted dentae, his servos twitching abortively towards Ratchet’s hands. Pressure built, his sensornet screaming cherry-red agony, his voice rising into a high, tortured keen (it hurt, _oh Primus it hurt_ , it felt like his body was trying to tear itself in half). Red warnings flickered over his HUD, blurring with the feedback as his overworked tactile centre pressganged smaller subprocessors into picking up the slack. Data cascaded through his neural net, burying him under an ice-sharp avalanche of pain.

And at last something _gave_ , the misshapen scars in the biomechanisms finally releasing each other. His main armor plates parted, slowly at first, and spiralled outwards.

Optimus let his helm fall back, the keen breaking into harsh sobs of relief. Ratchet let go of the plates, watching carefully as they furled against each other like the petals of a flower. Underneath, the disfigured silver inner plating began to move in turn.

Something popped inside his chassis, and Optimus felt with alarm something wet trickling through his internals. “Ratchet— there, ah, something has come loose. It’s leaking.”

“Pits,” Ratchet swore succinctly. The quick tingle of a full-strength medical scan washed over Optimus, and he heard the creak of hydraulics as tension bled out of Ratchet’s frame. “Oh, thank Primus—it’s nothing to worry about, Optimus, just amniotic fluids. Don’t—” he bit back the rest of the sentence, but pain-fuzzled as he was, Optimus could fill in the blanks: _Don’t scare me like that._

“There is quite a lot of it,” he gasped, bracing himself as his internals clenched and shifted all at once, searing a new wave of pain into his neural net. “I may need the washracks after this.”

Ratchet laughed humorlessly. “You’ll deserve a year’s worth of solvent after this is over. Brace yourself.” Sharp lancing pain snapped through his external protoform plating, but faded after a moment, and the tight feeling eased somewhat. “Good news for once –- the external protoform isn’t as affected by the scarring as I’d worried. It’s moving on its own.”

Fans open and roaring, frame shuddering, Optimus nodded. “I will take what reprieve I can get at this stage.”

“Good idea.”

Ratchet hunched further over him, nimble fingers reaching into his internals. Sharp, clinical cuts opened him up, his protoform peeling away under Ratchet’s scalpel. Optimus choked back screams, his autonomics drowning him under the urge to push Ratchet away and curl into a miserable huddle, to wrap his arms around his belly and wait for the birth to tear him open. There were memories, buried billions of years back in the Matrix, of carriers who had died that way, too taken by the protective instinct to let common sense and medical intervention save their lives.

So he held onto the last scraps of his control, and let Ratchet do what he had to. No-one could afford to lose him—least of all his daughter.

It seemed to take an age. His chronometer ticked over to 5.00AM -– half an hour until the day shift started. Neither he nor Ratchet were rostered on today, but they were almost always the first ones up. Their absence would raise questions which Optimus still didn’t know how to answer. The puddle of gestational fluids on the berth beneath him grew steadily, bright blue energon dripping into it from twoscore minor wounds.

A final cut, a last muffled scream, and Ratchet had his internals exposed. “Not long now, Optimus,” he said, covering one of Optimus’ servos with his own. “The gestational chamber is in position, and has begun to open—” he paused, and a gush of amniotic fluid rushed out through gaps in the biomechanisms. Optimus shuddered at the feeling, pushing himself further upright and clutching to Ratchet’s hand like a lifeline.

“There we go,” Ratchet said, and squeezed back, gently. “Phase Three is underway.”

Optimus looked down at himself through slitted optics, shaking his helm at the ruin his abdomen had become. It looked as though something had forced its way out from inside him, a bomb perhaps, the wet, energon-streaked bulge of his gestational chamber just visible past the upper edge of the wound—and that was really what it looked like, something life-threatening rather than life-giving.

A gasp, a flare of the bond. Something _moved_ inside him, the parting plates of the chamber lifting fractionally as the sparkling behind them pushed in her bid to be free.

“Primus,” he and Ratchet breathed in twain, their optics meeting, locking gazes in shared wonder. A smile tugged at the corners of Ratchet’s mouth, one which was echoed on Optimus’ own face even through the pain wracking his frame.

Ratchet looked away first, lifting a servo to Optimus’ internals as the first plate furled away. “A good sign,” he said, his voice soft, giving away none of the fine tremors in his frame. “Primus below, I can’t believe she survived everything.”

“Mortilus herself couldn’t keep her,” Optimus said, and suddenly he had a name for her, one that clicked into place as if it had always been there. “Welcome, Persephone.”

Ratchet gave him a quick, marvelling smile. “Is that her name? It fits.”

Optimus nodded in wordless assent, shuttering his optics. The pain was still there, as sharp as ever, but suddenly it didn’t seem so important. The sparkling kicked and squirmed, her spark alight with edgy anticipation. His sensornet picked up the movement as though it was a full-fledged flip, sharp and dizzying.

“There we go, easy now,” Ratchet murmured—to Persephone, Optimus realised. “Be patient, little one; you’ll be free soon enough.”

Another plate opened out, and fine, wet filaments spilled out through the gap. Golden fluids trickled through them, coating Ratchet’s digits. Optimus tipped his helm back and shuddered, the bond linking him to his child wavering strangely. Suddenly she felt distant, her bright excitement dulling.

He opened his optics and looked down, just in time to see the fourth and fifth plates transform out of the way and the whole mass slip, fibres and support cables and tubing so thin it might as well have been wires slumping into Ratchet’s hands.

Simultaneously the bond convulsed and faded, her presence torn from his awareness inside the tick of a nanoklik.

Optimus grabbed Ratchet’s wrists, deep dark panic taking hold of every processor thread he had. “Ratchet—I can’t— what happened?! I can’t feel her anymore!” His emotional centres stalled, unable to deal with the sudden shift from joy to absolute horror. “Where is she?” He searched madly through the tattered remnants of the bond for any sign of her, wailing with grief when the last echoes of her slipped through his awareness.

Ratchet’s voice filtered past the panic, deliberately calm and soothing. He clung to it, gasping intakes, trying to focus. “—calm down, Optimus, please! You need to stop panicking, you’re scaring her worse than she already is. You’re doing fine, she’s alive, this is a normal process.”

“How?” he choked out, unable to reconcile it with the terror still cycling through his spark. “I felt her _disappear_.”

Instead of pushing his servos away, the medic guided them to the open wound in his abdomen, and placed something in his hands.

Weight, in his palms, fluid-covered metal and _life._ Optimus’ spark stopped.

His daughter let loose a thin, babyish keen, her helm falling to the side, her tiny servos clenched tight to her chest.

She was mostly white –- pure, gypsum white, shining with the faintest gold hues under the gestational fluids and energon clinging to her baby-soft plating –- with bright sky-blue trim on her helm, arms and pedes. Her shoulders and chest were solid, her lower limbs disproportionately large. There was a curve to her upper spinal strut that had her curling into herself as if to shield her spark from an attack, and her left leg was crumpled and misshapen, held out from her body at an uncomfortable angle. She opened her optics for the first time, and they were filtered bright yellow, bordering on molten-metal orange.

She had a chevron almost exactly like Ratchet’s.

“Open your spark,” Ratchet urged, burying his hands in Optimus’ internals once more. “Stroke her chest plating until she opens her own, and hold her to you. She’s cold and terrified, and she needs to read your spark signature to realise that she’s safe.”

Optimus did so in a dream state, unable to look away. The tiny new life in his hands howled but made no move to push away, her cries tailing off into a soft series of electronic hiccups as her chest plating retracted, and the bright purple light of her spark spilled out. He nestled her into the gap between his opened core armor, his spark reaching desperately out for her.

Something in his coding clicked, latched onto the minute wavelengths of her EM field, tying it to the open wound the bond had left on his spark. Fierce emotion swept thought his processor straight from the deepest, most ancient parts of spark and coding: Optimus sobbed reflexively and cradled his arms around her, unable to hold back his most visceral reactions.

Movement in front of him, and basic recognition protocols acknowledged the presence of the sire of his child –- he relaxed before he’d even realised it was Ratchet. His mate drew away from his gaping abdomen, moving into position behind him, kneeling at his back, open chest plates radiating his spark pulse. It felt right on a degree almost wholly unfamiliar to Optimus -– almost like the weight of the Matrix bracketing his spark chamber.

“The bond between carrier and child fades at separation, and further at emergence,” he said softly, stroking Optimus’ sides. “Do you remember me telling you? Some mecha find it easier to deal with than the initial shock of separation, while for others it is worse. It is part of the degradation process, and is a completely natural part of carrying. It wouldn’t be fair to either sparkling or carrier to be tied to each other their entire lives.” He buried his face against Optimus’ back, and fell silent with a mumbled oath to Primus.

Optimus shuddered, basest relief flooding his processor queues. He could feel her again, a pale and drab connection compared to mere minutes ago, but it was enough, enough to reassure him that she was still _alive_ , that Mortilus had not yet snatched her away from him. He held her close to his spark, sharing her terror and need, her fierce love for him. _You’re mine and I won’t let anything take you away from me._

Ratchet’s servos reached up to his open chest, a touch that even tasting of _safety/home/mate_ as it did made Optimus startle, half-moving to push him away. “There should be a feeding line close to your spark chamber,” he said, and stilled before he reached the nook where Persephone was huddled. “She’ll run out of gestational energon soon, but her processing plant won’t be developed enough to handle even soft-grade for another few years.”

Optimus made a soft noise of acknowledgement, searching through sections of his coding the emergent sequence had triggered. Persephone grasped the line, and Optimus guided it to her mouth, wincing as she bit down on the end before beginning to suckle.

Ratchet chuffed a quiet laugh behind him, and began to work on excavating the last of the support filaments from his gestational chamber, catching it as it disconnected in clumps and trails from Optimus’ own living systems, snagging a bucket with the tip of his pede and depositing the degrading protomatter in it. Once the last of it was dealt with, he scooted backwards and leant against the wall, gently tugging Optimus back to lay between his legs. Optimus rested his helm against Ratchet’s chest, over his spark, and together they watched their daughter feed.

They stayed like that for a long time, a family clinging together, the silence around them only broken by the steady whirring of Optimus’ overstressed fans and the occasional thin mewling cry as Persephone drank her fill and decided she had better things to be doing than laying around all day. Like playing with his internals, for example. He didn’t have the spark to stop her.

A broadband ping from Arcee startled Optimus out of his meditative daze. He blinked up at Ratchet, who by the resigned look on his face had received it as well.

It was 9:23AM.

“I’ll answer it,” Ratchet sighed, absently stroking Optimus’ cheek vents. “Keep resting, gather your strength. We need to get you to the washracks before I let you recharge.” He switched to comms, speaking aloud for Optimus’ benefit. “Arcee. Is everything well?”

“ _Fine_ ,” she replied, her voice layered with harmonics of concern. “ _Has something happened to you two? You’re not usually this late up. The children are about five minutes away.”_

“Five minutes…?” Ratchet echoed flatly. “Oh Primus, it’s Saturday.” He frowned and rubbed his chevron, shuttering his optics as he thought.

“ _Now I know something’s happened,”_ Arcee said archly. “ _Is Optimus there?”_

“He is,” Ratchet admitted. “Look, I need you to do something for me—for us,” he corrected himself. Arcee interrupted him with a wicked snicker.

“ _Don’t worry, I’ll keep the kids out of the back rooms until you get out here. I guess you’ve earned a lazy morning.”_

Ratchet sputtered for a moment. “Wait, no—that’s not what I meant. This is important—there’s a datapad on my workbench in the medbay. I need you to bring it to my quarters, and please don’t jump to conclusions. I mean that most sincerely; _please_ don’t.”

There was a moment of silence. “ _Okay,”_ Arcee said eventually, drawing out the word in a suspicious lilt. “ _I’ll see you in a moment.”_

Ratchet exvented heavily, shutting off the connection. “I have no idea how this is going to go,” he admitted, raising his optics to the ceiling. “Close up your spark; we may as well get you semi-presentable.”

He helped Optimus sit up, slipping out from behind him and taking hold of Persephone for the first time while Optimus’ chestplates slid shut. She let out a quizzical chirp as he settled her in his hands, resting her against his own chest. Her tiny arms flailed excitedly, knocking against his doors. She gasped and growled; whether at the impact or at her inability to control her own limbs, Optimus didn’t know.

Light steps echoed in the corridor outside, and the door creaked open, Arcee’s blue helm peeking around the corner. Her face lightened in amusement; she pushed the door open all the way and stepped into the room, datapad in hand—and nearly dropped it as she caught sight of the gaping hole in Optimus’ abdomen.

“Primus below—Optimus, what happened to you?! Ratchet, what’s going on?” She took two rapid steps towards them, her optics searching their frames for clues, and stopped dead. A rainbow of expressions flashed over her features, starting with raw shock, passing through shades of fascination and suspicion and ending with a hard mask of carefully studied patience. She crossed her arms, tucked the datapad in by her side, and looked from Ratchet to Optimus and back again.

“That’s a sparkling,” she stated, her tone flat and accusing. Optimus suddenly felt far too exhausted to be dealing with this.

“This is Persephone,” he rumbled, clutching at the edge of the berth to ground himself as his abdomen gave a painful clench. His internals were starting to settle back into their normal positions, the swelling easing away.

Arcee gave him a long look, her optics lingering on his abdomen. She knew enough to put two and two together, and did so without any further delaying. “You carried her.”

“I did,” Optimus nodded his affirmative.

“And Ratchet sired her, I’m guessing.”

“I did,” Ratchet said, his EM field taut and unreactive, holding in his temper. From his arms, Persephone peered down at Arcee, her optics on a level just above the sylph’s helm.

Arcee pulled in a deep breath, shuttering her optics. “Had you both gone completely mad?” she demanded, focusing her ire on Ratchet. “How could you put Optimus in such danger?! How could you put _her_ in danger like that? The Arctic, the Cybonic Plague, Turkey, the space bridge—and those are only the most recent incidents! War is no place for a sparkling—and Pits, I never thought I’d have to say that, least of all to you two! Do you have any idea how many regulations this breaks? How much danger it puts us all in?!”

“I have been living it for the past three and a half years,” Optimus said quietly. Arcee looked at him, and all of a sudden the wind went out of her sails. Her shoulders and winglets slumped, her expression turning resigned.

“Then _why_?” she asked, softer this time. “I don’t understand.”

“If it helps at all, we certainly didn’t plan to have her,” Ratchet rasped, his field shivering with the herculean effort of holding his temper back. Persephone began to wriggle and shrill in his arms, and there was a tense moment as he passed her back to Optimus, taking the time to caress her tiny helm as she plastered herself against Optimus’ windshield, falling silent once more. He sat down on the berth next to Optimus, uncaring of the gestational fluids drying on its surface. “What do you know of resonance?”

“It’s an urban legend,” she said dismissively, her optics narrowing. “The only time I’ve ever seen it mentioned in a critical capacity was in a review of some second-rate romance novel. Why?”

Ratchet shook his helm. “It’s incredibly rare, but perfectly real. Some sparks share resonant wavelengths, and just occasionally, the mechs bearing those sparks meet, fall in love, and merge. Such is natural, of course, but when they merge… things happen without conscious prompting. Optimus and I share resonant sparks. We didn't realise it until we merged, and it went deep, without either of us intending it. We weren’t hardlined, so it didn’t bond us, but… you already know the basics of kindling, so I won’t bother repeating it. Persephone was the result.”

Arcee was silent for a long moment. “Talk about defying the odds,” she allowed eventually, unfolding her arms and passing the datapad to Ratchet. “I don’t know if I believe it, but… Primus. It’s been a lifetime since I saw a sparkling.”

“A very long time indeed,” Optimus murmured, watching Persephone wriggle about in his hands. She was so small, so fragile it nearly broke his spark, her plating soft enough it would dent if he held her even a fraction too tight. She could just about sit up if someone helped her up and gave her something to lean on, her misshapen left leg twisting to the front as if she sat cross-legged as the humans did sometimes. It was noticeably thinner than the rest of her, and unlike her other limbs did not move more than a twitch when she flailed about.

_I am so sorry, my daughter. It is good that you are a fighter, because your trials may not be over just yet._

Arcee exvented, nodding slowly. “What happens now?” she asked, gesturing to Optimus –- his wound, rather. “That really doesn’t look comfortable.”

“It is not,” Optimus agreed, smiling faintly. He glanced across to Ratchet, deferring to the medic’s greater knowledge.

“First, you need a solvent bath… more or less now. You and Persephone both, and probably me as well, to be honest,” Ratchet said, lacing his digits together and settling his servos in his lap. “After that I’ll stitch your subdural protomass back together –- and you _will_ be on berth rest for at least the entire weekend, do you understand –- and see what I can do about those scars on your outer plating mechanisms, because after this they’ll likely be far worse than they were before.”

“Scars?” Arcee asked, a faintly squeamish curiosity glimmering in her field. “No, I don’t think I want to know.”

“My gestational systems are severely damaged,” Optimus explained, adjusting his hold on Persephone. She squealed as he passed her from hand to hand, losing her balance and flopping down on her back. “Which is another reason Persephone is lucky to be alive –- I had not thought I was ever going to be able to kindle, regardless of the possibility of an end to our war.”

“I see.” Arcee watched for a moment as Persephone reached out for his fingers, catching the tip of his thumb quite by accident and warbling happily. “Well. The kids have probably arrived by now. I’ll head them off so you three have time to wash up. I’ll guess we won’t be seeing you for the rest of the day?”

Ratchet grimaced. “I’ll need Optimus in the medbay for repairs… which means we’ll have to pass through the main silo to get there. Is there any chance, any at all, of getting the kids out of there on some pretext for the entire day? Because that’s about how long it’ll take.”

“They will need to be told sooner or later,” Optimus pointed out. He didn’t know how he was going to make it that far without falling into recharge, but it was going to have to be done regardless. “Bulkhead and Bumblebee will have questions as well. We have kept it from you this long, but I fail to see how to continue doing so –- or that it would be the best course of action.”

Arcee’s lips thinned. “Acknowledged. I will tell them the basics, then, and you two can deal with the specifics. I still have questions of my own.”

“I can ask no more of you.” Optimus paused for a moment, and added a heartfelt, “Thank you.”

Ratchet rolled his optics. Arcee straightened, glared sidelong at him -– it was going to take a lot for her to forgive him, evidently, and Optimus had no doubt that were it not for the chirping sparkling in his arms, he’d be feeling the sharp edge of the little sylph’s temper as well. He couldn’t say he blamed her, despite the extenuating circumstances burned into his memory banks.

Arcee left. Ratchet rose to his feet, offering Optimus his servos.

Optimus put Persephone down on the berth for a moment so he could accept the help, and she screamed, and screamed. He clutched at Ratchet’s shoulder for support, staggering on his pedes, his abdominal neural net on fire. On the berth, Persephone turned herself onto her belly, her tiny servos scrabbling at the metalmesh, trying to pull herself closer to him. As soon as he could stand by himself, he snatched her up as quickly as he dared, tucking her into the curve of his neck and pressing a kiss to her forehelm. She whimpered and grabbed his thumb, holding on with a grip that was surprisingly strong.

“Come on,” Ratchet said lowly, looping an arm around Optimus’ waist. “Let’s get you two cleaned up.”

...


End file.
